Trump indicted
Donald Trump will be the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges. A grand jury in New York City voted to indict him for his role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, people with knowledge of the matter told The Times.
Trump’s surrender is expected on Tuesday. He will face arraignment, at which point the specific charges will be unsealed.
At Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his aides were caught off guard by the timing, my colleague Maggie Haberman reports. They thought any such action was still weeks away and might not occur. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing.
The development will shake up the 2024 presidential race, in which Trump is a candidate: It’s uncertain if an indictment would rally Republican voters to Trump’s side — or erode his standing among them. Notably, Trump faces other investigations, but any indictment or conviction would not bar him from running.
The indictment will also test American democracy, our chief White House correspondent writes in an analysis: “For all of the focus on the tawdry details of the case or its novel legal theory or its political impact, the larger story is of a country heading down a road it has never traveled before, one fraught with profound consequences for the health of the world’s oldest democracy.”
What’s next: The arrest will be anything but routine. And a conviction is not assured; the legal theory has yet to be evaluated by judges.
Trump’s statement: “This is political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.” He has consistently painted the investigation as a larger political conspiracy.
The arrest was a stunningly provocative move, aimed at one of the best-known Western journalists still working inside Russia — and his employer, a pillar of the American news media. With the arrest, President Vladimir Putin signaled to the world that he was doubling down on Russia’s wartime isolation.
Gershkovich, like other Western journalists, had the Kremlin’s formal approval to work there. But Russia’s options for retaliation have grown increasingly limited — Europe has largely weaned itself off its dependence on Russian energy imports, and major Western companies have largely cut ties with Russia. Western journalists have thus become one of the few remaining potential pressure points, as a possible spring offensive looms.
Details: Gershkovich, 31, grew up in Princeton, N.J., as a child of Soviet émigrés. The Journal vehemently denied the accusations against him. The White House condemned the arrest. Russian officials said he was “caught red-handed” and jailed in Yekaterinburg, about 900 miles east of Moscow.
A swap? In past espionage cases, Russia has used detentions to instigate prisoner exchanges. Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison. Acquittals in such cases are virtually unheard-of.
Police seize on new technologies
In the Middle East, A.I. and other emerging technologies have become part of everyday policing. The spread shows the proliferation of certain surveillance technologies, once believed to be widespread only in China.
A police conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, provided a rare look at an increasingly global police surveillance business. A brain wave reader that can detect lies. Miniaturized cameras that sit inside vape pens and disposable coffee cups. Video cameras that zoom in from more than a kilometer away to capture faces and license plates.
The technologies expand the potential reach of law enforcement in the U.A.E. and other countries in the region and signal a new era of policing that raises questions about the effects on people’s privacy and about how political power is wielded.
Culinary habits in Afghanistan are changing under the Taliban, as people learn to cook with less. In Kabul, many restaurants have closed. Even middle-class families have cut back.
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An online sensation
Less than four years ago, a Mexican grandmother named Ángela Garfias Vázquez — who goes by Doña Ángela, or Mrs. Ángela — began posting cooking videos to YouTube.
Since then, she has become one of the most watched cooks in the world. Her channel has gotten 437 million views, which is more than Martha Stewart’s channel (roughly 172 million) and the NYT Cooking channel (about 72 million) combined.
Mrs. Ángela’s fans say that her appeal lies in her grandmotherly aura. In her, people of Latin American descent see their abuelas: whether by Mrs. Ángela’s shirts flecked with flowers, by the spots on her hands or by her ability to handle hot tortillas without flinching.
“It’s all these little revelations of memories coming back to you,” said a longtime fan whose grandmother is from Mexico.
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What to Cook
